Two Captains (33 page)

In short, he really got me interested, and I was very annoyed when, some fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the farm gate to find a watchman there with a rifle slung over his shoulder who told us that the farm was not open for inspection.

"What is it open for?"

"For scientific work," said the watchman.

"Could we see the director?"

"The director is out."

"Who's in charge?"

"The Senior Research Associate," the watchman said impressively.

"Ah, that's the man we want."

I left Volodya at the gate and went in search of the S.R.A. Obviously not many people came to the farm, for only a single narrow track ran through the snow-covered courtyard to the house which the watchman had pointed out to me. After shaking the snow off my boots I opened the door and found myself in a large low-ceilinged room which led into another larger room where a man was sitting at a desk. He got up on seeing me. He looked at me in a way that was very familiar and reminded me of Valya Zhukov. The same amiable, slightly mad expression. He even had the same dark down on his cheeks, only thicker and blacker. Could this be Valya? I voiced the thought:

"Valya! Is that you?"

"What?" he said in a bewildered way, cocking his head to one side as Valya used to do.

"Valya, you sonofagun!" I said, my heart giving an enormous bound.

"What's the matter? Don't you recognise me?"

He smiled vaguely and gave me his hand.

"Why, yes," he said in an artificial tone. "I think we have met."

"Think? You think we have met!"

I grabbed his arm and dragged him to the window.

"Look, you cow!"

He looked and gave a vague little laugh.

"Dammit, don't you recognise me?" I said with amazement.

He blinked. Then the vagueness left his face, leaving a real, true Valya which you could confuse with no one else in the world.

"Sanya!" he yelled with a gasp. "Is that you?"

We embraced and started off arm in arm. In the doorway he kissed me again.

"So it's you? G11 bejiggered! When did you arrive?"

"I didn't arrive, I live here."

"What d'you mean?"

"What I say. I've been here six months."

"No, really?" Valya muttered. "But of course, I'm seldom in town, or I might have run into you. H'm... Six months!"

He led me into another room, which looked much the same as the one we had just left, except that it had a bed in it and a gun hanging on the wall.

The other room was his study and this was his bedroom. Somewhere nearby there was a laboratory, judging by the stink in the house. It struck me as funny how this animal smell went with Valya, with his absent-looking eyes, his shock of hair and that down on his cheeks. Valya had always carried the smell of some animal around with him.

I reminded myself that I had left Volodya at the gate, and Valya sent a junior research associate for him. This junior, by the way, was some thirty years older than Valya, an imposing bearded figure with a queer thin nose.

Apparently, he had made an impression on Volodya, because they did not come in until half an hour later, chatting in a friendly fashion, and Volodya announced that Pavel Petrovich-that was the man's name-had promised to show him the fox kitchen.

"And even treat him to a fox dinner," said Pavel Petrovich.

"Show him the 'jungle'," Valya said.

Volodya flushed and held his breath when he heard the word. Jungle-it sounded so thrilling.

They went out, leaving Valya and me alone together. We started reminiscing about Korablev and the boys. After a while Valya reminded himself that the fox cubs had to be given their medicine.

"Have somebody give it to them."

"No, I've got to do that myself," Valya said. "It's Vigantol, for rickets. You wait here, I won't be long."

I did not want to part from him and we went off together.

CHAPTER NINE GOOD NIGHT!

Valya persuaded me to stay the night, and we telephoned the doctor to say that Volodya would be returning home by himself.

We took a walk in the woods, then went back to Valya's room and had a drink together. He told me that he had seldom left the farm during the last six months. He was engaged in interesting work-examining the stomachs of sables in order to discover what they ate. He had several stomachs of his own, from the farm and some two hundred or so presented to him by some animal reservation. And he had discovered a very interesting thing: that when hunting small furbearers it was important to spare the ground squirrel, and this was the sable's staple diet.

I listened to him in silence. We were quite alone, in an empty house, and the room was absolutely bare-the big, comfortless room of a lonely man.

"Yes, that's interesting," I said, when Valya had finished. "So the sable needs ground squirrels to live on? Well, well! And d'you know what you need most of all? What you're badly in need of? A wife!"

Valya blinked, then laughed.

"What makes you think that?" he said irresolutely.

"Because you live like a dog. And d'you know what kind of wife you need? One who'd bring you sandwiches in your lab and wouldn't be demanding on your attention."

"I don't know," Valya muttered. "I'll marry eventually I suppose. When I'm through with my thesis I'll be quite free. I'll soon be going back to Moscow, you know. What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Why don't you marry?"

After a pause, I said: "Oh, it's different with me. I lead a different life-here today and at the other end of the earth tomorrow. I can't marry."

"No, you ought to marry too," Valya retorted , then, struck by a sudden thought, he added: "I say, do you remember coming to see me at the Zoo with Katya, who brought a friend along? What was her name? A tall girl with plaits."

His face assumed such a gentle, childish expression that I could not help laughing.

"Yes, of course. Kiren! Good-looking, isn't she?"

"Very," said Valya. "Very."

He wanted to give me his bed, but I preferred a shakedown on the floor.

There were plenty of cots in the house, but I had always liked sleeping on the floor.

I did not feel like sleeping that night. We talked about everything under the sun, then harked back to the subject of Korablev.

"You know." Valya said, "I may be wrong, of course, but I have an idea that he was a little in love with Maria Vasilievna. Don't you think so?"

"Maybe."

"Because a very odd thing happened. One day, when I called to see him, I saw her portrait on his desk. I asked him something, because I happened to be going to Tatarinovs the next day, and he suddenly started talking about her. Then he fell silent, and he had such a look on his face ... I decided there was something wrong there."

"You don't say so?" I said with annoyance. "What the hell-you must be living up in the clouds. A little in love! Why, he couldn't live without her! And all this was going on right under your nose. But you were busy with your snakes then!"

"No, really? Poor devil!"

"Poor devil's right."

After a pause I asked:

"Were you often at the Tatarinovs?"

"Not very often. About three times."

"How are they getting on?"

Valya rose on his elbow. He seemed to be trying to see my face in the dark, though I had spoken quite calmly.

"They're all right. Nikolai Antonich is a professor now."

"Is that so! What does he read?"

"Pedology," Valya said. "And a highly respected professor, I'd haVe you know. As a matter of fact..."

"As a matter of fact what?"

"I think you were mistaken about him."

"Do you?"

"Yes," Valya said with conviction. "You were wrong about him. Just look how he treats his pupils, for instance. Why, he's ready to go through fire and water for them. Romashov told me that last year-"

"Romashov? Where does he come in?"

"What d'you mean? It was he who took me to the Tatarinovs."

"How does he come to be there?"

"He's Nikolai Antonich's assistant. He's there every day. He's an intimate friend of the family."

"Wait a minute, what are you talking about? I don't understand. You mean Romashka?"

"Yes, of course," said Valya. "Only nobody calls him that now. By the way, I believe he's going to marry Katya."

I felt a sudden stab through the heart and sat up. Valya sat up, too, and stared at me blankly.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Oh, of course. Damn it. I'd quite forgotten!"

He muttered something, then looked around with an air of bewilderment and got out of his bed.

"Well, not exactly going to marry-"

"Finish what you were going to say," I said quite calmly.

"What d'you mean 'finish'?" Valya stammered. "I didn't say anything. It was just my idea, it doesn't mean anything. I get funny ideas sometimes, you know."

"Valya!"

"I don't know anything!" Valya said in desperation. "It's only an idea.

I get some crazy ideas sometimes. You don't have to believe me!"

"You have an idea that Romashov is going to marry Katya?"

"Hell, no! I tell you, no! Nothing of the sort! He started to dress up, that's all."

"Valya!"

"I swear I don't know anything more."

"Has he talked to you about it?"

"Well, yes. He told me he'd been saving up money since he was thirteen and had now taken and spent it all in six months. Has that got anything to do with it, you think?"

I was no longer listening to him. I lay on the floor, staring out at the sky, and it seemed to me that I was lying in some deep abyss and the whole world was humming and talking above me, while I was lying all alone with nobody to say a word to. The sky was still dark and the stars still visible, but already a faint, distant light was hovering over the earth, and I was thinking-here we had spent the whole night talking and this is where it has led us!

"Good night!"

"Good night!" I answered mechanically.

I wished now I had left with Volodya. A choking sensation came into my throat and I felt like getting up and going out into the fresh air, but I lay where I was, merely turning over onto my stomach with my face in my hands. So that was that! Incredible though it was, I could not stop thinking about it for a minute. The incredible thing about it was Romashka, for I could not imagine him and Katya together. But what made me think she had not forgotten me all this time? After all, we hadn't met for so many years.

Valya was asleep and my going out would probably have awakened him. But I did not feel like talking to him any more, and so I remained lying on my stomach, then on my back, then again on my stomach with my face in my hands.

Afterwards-it must have been round about seven-the telephone rang and Valya jumped up, sleepy-eyed, and ran into the next room dragging the blanket behind him.

"It's for you," he said, returning a moment later.

"Me?"

I threw my coat over my shoulders and went to the telephone.

"Sanya!" It was the doctor speaking. "Where've you disappeared to? I'm phoning from the Executive Committee office. I'm handing over the receiver."

"Comrade Grigoriev," said another voice. It was the Zapolarie police chief. "An urgent matter. You have to fly to Camp Vanokan with Doctor Pavlov. Do you know Ledkov?"

Did I know him! He was a member of the regional Executive Committee and one of the most respected men in the North country. Everyone knew him.

"He's wounded and needs urgent medical aid. When can you fly out?"

"Within an hour," I said.

"And you, doctor?"

I did not catch the doctor's answer.

"Instruments all in order? Good. I'll see you in an hour's time then, at the airfield."

CHAPTER TEN THE FLIGHT

These were the people aboard the plane on the morning of March 5th when we took off and headed northeast: the doctor, anxious-looking, wearing dark glasses, which changed his appearance surprisingly, my air mechanic Luri, one of the most popular men in Zapolarie or wherever else in the Arctic he happened to appear for at least three or four days, and myself.

This was my fifteenth flight in the North, but my first flight to a district where they had never seen a plane before. Camp Vanokan was a very remote spot on one of the tributaries of the Pyasina. The doctor had been on the Pyasina before and said it should not be difficult to find Vanokan.

A member of the E.C. had been wounded. It had happened while he was out hunting-so it was believed. Anyway, I and the doctor had been asked to ascertain in what circumstances this had happened. We should arrive at Vanokan about three o'clock, before it grew dark. For an emergency, though, we took with us provisions for three men to last thirty days, a primus-stove, a flare gun with a supply of flares, a shotgun and cartridges, spades, a tent and an axe.

As for the weather, all I knew was that it was fine at Zapolarie but what it was like along our route I had no idea. There was no time to get a report and no one to give it.

And so all was in order when we took off from Zapolarie and headed northeast. All was in order, and I was no longer thinking about what I had heard from Valya the night before. Below me I could see the Yenisei-a broad, white band between white banks, along which ran a forest, now closing in, now drawing back. I had a slight headache after that sleepless night and sometimes there was a ringing in my ears, but only in my ears, for the engine was working splendidly.

After a while I left the line of the river, and the tundra began-a level, endless, snowy plain unrelieved by a single black dot, nothing whatever to catch the eye...

Why had I been so sure that this could never happen? I should have written to her when she sent me her regards through Sanya. But I had not wanted to make any advances to her until I had proved that I was blameless.